Back around the end of June in ’82 my father had borrowed a pickup truck with a camper in the bed from one of his buddies at 447 Sqn. so that he and his new wife, my stepmother, could go to Banff for their honeymoon.
Slide-in camper / Demountable camper.
They had no intention of taking Scott and I with them. We got unceremoniously dropped of with out mother in Calgary, AB. Yeah, the same mother that he told Alberta Social Services that had abandoned the family and that the same mother that he had told Alberta Social Services that he had no idea of how to contact.
When Richard and Sue were finished with their honeymoon they swung back through Calgary to pick Scott and I up. We drove back up to CFB Griesbach in Edmonton.
The truck was parked on the street in front of the PMQ.
Richard had gone somewhere and it was just Sue at home.
Scott got on top of the camper and stuffed the vents with leaves.
Just before Richard was due home Scott found me and told me that Richard was going to be pissed off with me for “me” having put the leaves into the vent on the camper.
I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, so I went to check out the camper.
I looked at the camper from the outside and I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, but once I opened the back door and climbed inside the camper I saw what he was talking about. The wind-up vent was plugged full of leaves. There was no way that Richard wasn’t going to notice this.
So, up on the roof I went.
Tim’s truck was a raised 4X4 with proper off road tires. With the camper on the back the roof had to be about 3 metres off the ground.
I got all of the leaves cleared out. It was spick and span.
I went to climb down the ladder and I lost my footing.
I landed on the ground flat on my back.
I had the wind knocked out of me and all I could see was stars.
It took so much effort to start to breathe again.
One of the locals came over and helped me up and walked me back to the PMQ where Sue was.
Sue sent me up to my room with the warning that Richard was not going to be happy when he got home.
When Richard got home he was none too pleased to find what had happened. The fact that I did something stupid that could get him in trouble with his commanding officer showed that I didn’t care about his military career.
The fact that I allowed Scott out of my sight meant that Scott could have fallen off the roof of the camper.
The fact that I wasn’t responsible enough to look after my brother meant thatI should take this as a lesson and learn from this.
My left wrist was burning. My right hand was swollen, numb, and immovable. But neither were anything compared to the headache and vomiting.
My father gave me some of his 222s to help me sleep.
Two days went by and then he took me to the Charles Camsell hospital in Edmonton to get my wrists looked at.
That’s when it was discovered that I wasn’t faking anything.
A couple of the larger bones in my right wrist were fractured. My left wrist had hairline fractures and was sprained.
The headaches and the vomiting had stopped by this point so I don’t think that Richard had mentioned anything to the doctors.
I can’t remember what Richard told the doctors, but I know he didn’t mention anything about falling off campers.
My left wrist got wrapped in a tensor. My right arm was set in a cast.
For illustrative purposes only
Did you know that it’s almost impossible to wipe your own ass when your dominant hand is set in an arm cast? My left arm wasn’t much use either. Hairlines are really super sensitive to force.
I wasn’t Sue’s kid, so that was out of the question. After Richard and Sue got married Sue wasted no time in telling Scott and I that we were to address her as Sue only that we were never to call her “mom” or refer to her as our “mother”. So yeah, wiping my ass wasn’t on her list of agreed upon tasks.
Richard only kept my brother and I because “it was cheaper than paying child support”. Wiping my ass was not very high on his list of priorities.
And as much as I feared my grandmother, she had moved out of the PMQ back in the spring of 1981. Walking from the PMQ at 10215 – 138 Ave over to my grandmother’s apartment at 10611 – 111th St. to get my butt wiped wasn’t in the cards.
Many creative ways were tried and tested to wipe my ass that didn’t involve using my hands.
The cast was only supposed to stay on my right arm for six weeks, but it ended up staying on for the entire summer as Richard insisted that this was the best way to teach me to not fuck around.
I would have to say that my mental health is probably the single most significant sacrifice that I’ve made. Sure, this wasn’t a conscious sacrifice that I made, it was more of a sacrifice that was made for me, but sure.
Most of my “sacrifices” were predetermined for me.
But let’s roll with them being willing sacrifices.
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
Quotes, idioms, maxims and the like have never been my forte.
I’m not what you’d call “well read”. I’ve read books from John Irving, Clive Barker, Stephen King, John Grisham. I’ve even read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
I didn’t have much of an exposure to music as a kid.
To be honest my interest in novels and music didn’t pick up until after I left home when I was sixteen. But even at that I never really gleaned anything that I would consider to be a quote that I “live my life by or think of often”.
The closest that I would ever consider to be a quote that I think of often is a lyric from a song that was released in 2011
“As much as I’d like the past not to exist……. ……it still does” – Lost in Paradise – Evanescence.
I like this lyric because it sums up an issue that I have.
I’m stuck in the past.
And there is no moving forward.
What I went through as a kid on Canadian Forces Base Namao is not something that can simply be moved on from.
It’s not that no one knew about the abuse.
Everyone knew what was going on.
Various parents on Canadian Forces Base Namao knew what the babysitter was doing as they made complaints to the base military police.
The base military police knew as when they questioned the babysitter and asked him who had shown him how to do what he was doing, he named captain father Angus McRae.
The other parents knew who I was and that I had been found being buggered in the babysitter’s bedroom as I was no longer allowed to play with the other kids on base. I was “dirty”
Just months after the abuse ended I was diagnosed with major depression, severe anxiety, haphephobia, and a host of other issues that would become so severe that I was supposed to have been placed into a psychiatric hospital for children.
But for some reason my military social worker, captain Totzke, along with my father, master corporal Richard Gill, were functioning as road blocks to my receiving treatment.
Even when my father was posted to CFB Downsview in Ontario from CFB Greisbach in Alberta, he made a promise that he would have me placed into psychiatric care in Ontario.
Nothing ever came of this.
Age 7 and 8 I was sexually abused by a very angry at the world 14 year old. This also included various visits to the chapel when the babysitter would escort me over. From age 8 until age 11 I was caught in a battle with my father and captain Totzke on one side and Alberta Social Services and various psychiatrists on the other side. One side wanted to help, one side wanted to hinder.
From age 11 until age 16 I lived on Canadian Forces Base Downsview with my father who was still having issues with his alcoholism and his hair trigger temper.
And from age 16 until the present day I’ve been surviving.
It’s not that I like living in the past.
It’s that I was never allowed to move on from the past.
The past is all that I have ever known.
All I knew was my father’s anger for having “fucked” with his military career.
All I knew was that it was my fault the babysitter abused my brother.
According to captain Totzke, it was my “homosexuality” that made me go along with the babysitter.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to escape the past.
It was that I was never allowed to forget the past.
When I was about 14 my father beat the shit out of me when Scott stole our stepmother’s car and went for a joy ride. Richard was kicking me in the back as I was trying to crawl under my bed to get away from him. It was my fault that Scott was acting the way he was acting because I let the fucking babysitter touch him.
Again, it’s not that I want to be stuck in the past.
It’s that I was never allowed to even consider leaving the past.
And with the modern day Canadian Armed Forces being hellbent on ensuring that the truth never comes out about CFB Namao I never will be allowed to move on.
But, even if by some miracle the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence were to admit that bad things happened to about 25 children on CFB Namao that should never have happened, this won’t change things for me as I’ve lived each and every day since May of 1980 wondering what the fuck I did that was wrong.
That’s 16,441 days or 45 years and 5 days since I was forced to live with this.
What gives me direction in life is cleaning my name before I die.
That’s it
That’s all
The only thing keeping me alive at the moment is knowing that if I do die then the Canadian Armed Forces win be default.
Other than that I have no direction in life.
It’s not an obsession.
It’s all that I have
Ever since colonel Daniel Edward Munro signed his name to captain McRae’s charge sheet in June of 1980 dominoes were being set up, one by one, day by day, year by year, until March of 2011.
In March of 2011, after reviewing the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the transcripts from captain McRae’s court martial, it was the Canadian Armed Forces itself that knocked the first domino over.
The Canadian Armed Forces had the ability to do the right thing in 1980.
They chose not to.
The Canadian Armed Forces had the ability to do the right thing in 2011.
They chose not to.
The RCMP urged the Canadian Armed Forces to do the right thing in 2015.
The Canadian Armed Forces still chose not to.
After the release of the courts martial transcripts and the CFSIU investigation paperwork in 2020 the Canadian Armed Forces could have done the right thing.
The Canadian Armed Forces still chose not to.
Is it my job to bring to light all of the pre-1998 subterfuge that the Canadian Armed Forces have been allowed hide due to the flaws that existed in the pre-1998 National Defence Act?
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
If a member of the Canadian public wants to stick their nose into criminal code offence events that occurred prior to November of 1997, knock yourself out. Have at it.
Is it my job to make sure that people understand that I didn’t want the abuse on CFB Namao, that I didn’t want the babysitter to abuse my brother, that I had nothing to do with the babysitter molesting the little six-year-old blond haired girl?
That’s my job.
Is it my job to make sure that people understand that the CFSIU knew in 1980 that Captain McRae had been running a kiddie diddling ring on the base right under the nose of the base military police and that the CFSIU and the chain of command knew that McRae had been molested a great number of children on the base but that parents were reluctant to let their children be interviewed due to the view of the military police that captain McRae had been committing “acts of homosexuality” with the children that he was molesting thus implying that their children had been participating in “acts of homosexuality”?
Yes, that’s my job.
Is it my job to point out to people in the civilian world that “lawful” commands by superiors also include superiors instructing subordinates to not talk to the military police?
That’s already public knowledge, so not really my job.
Is it my job to make sure that the public understands that an untold number of children living on the bases were “involved with” the military social workers and that these social workers had a very negative and detrimental effect on the mental health and wellbeing of these abused children?
Yes, that’s my job.
I can’t fix all of the fuck-ups that the Canadian Armed Forces were allowed to keep hidden from the public eye via the National Defence Act, the Official Secrets Act, and the Security of Information Act.
But, I can at least do what I can to clean my name before I die.
The last time that I took a risk of any consequence was when I disobeyed my father’s wishes and I went to the Edmonton Police Service in 2011 and tried to report my former babysitter for molesting my brother and I on Canadian Forces Base Namao from 1978 to 1980.
In 2006 when, I first broached the topic of the babysitter with my father, he heavily cautioned me against trying to report the babysitter because if I insisted on sticking my nose into this I might not like the way the shit was going to smell.
For me, reporting the babysitter was extremely important. After all, up to that point in time my father had blamed me at every opportunity for allowing the babysitter to molest my younger brother. If I hadn’t let the babysitter molest Scott, then Scott wouldn’t have been in non-stop trouble with the law.
Richard was really upset that Scott was so dependent on Richard to meet his needs in order for Scott to stay somewhat functional.
I went up to Edmonton in the summer of 2003 to visit Richard after not having seen him since moving to Vancouver in 1992. I thought that he’d be pleased to see me.
After all, when Scott moved to the Vancouver area in 1996, Richard had contacted me a couple of times to help Scott out with his car. Dead starter one time. Broken throttle cable one time. Wheel bearings another time.
Nope.
I spent more time hanging out with the stepmother that I never got along with as a kid.
Richard barely had the time of day for me, except to explain to me that he was still upset with what I allowed to happen to Scott because Scott was having so many difficulties. Richard whined about having to currently pay Scott’s rent so that Scott wouldn’t try moving back in to Richard’s house in Morinville.
Richard also whined about being “forced” to give Scott his ’83 Mustang GT. Or how he had no choice but to give Scott Sue’s old ’89 Thunderbird after Scott totalled the Mustang on one of Edmonton’s many traffic circles.
When I told Richard that I had obtained my 5th Class Power Engineering certificate and that I was working towards my 4th Class Power Engineering certificate he didn’t care. Just said that no matter what certificate I had my stupid mouth and my stupid attitude were going to keep me unemployed.
I called Richard in September of 2005 to let him know that I landed a union position at a local hospital in the physical plant.
Didn’t give a shit.
Not in the slightest.
In fact he informed me that Scott had a job in a “card board box factory” and insinuated that with all of the struggles that Scott had overcome in his life that Scott’s employment meant far more than mine.
In August of 2006, after a night of drinking at various pride events in Vancouver, I called Richard and left him a couple of messages in which I unloaded both barrels on him.
I wasn’t expecting Richard to ever call back, but he did. I had never heard him whimper like this before in my life. He was like a big dog that just got the newspaper to the snout for pissing on the carpet.
It was your grandmother that hired P.S.
I didn’t like P.S. the first time I saw him.
I told your grandmother not to hire P.S.
And yes, my father used the babysitter’s name without any prompting.
My father called me every morning for the next couple of weeks, as if he was trying to make amends for the way things had been.
But everything came to a screeching halt after I told him that I was going to go to the police to report the babysitter.
“Somethings are best left in the past”
“Let sleeping dogs lie”
“If you stick your nose into this you’re not going to like the smell of the shit”
I didn’t make my complaint to the police right away.
I had legally changed my name in anticipation of transitioning and I had too many things on the go.
In February of 2011 I entered into an out of court settlement with another party in which I represented myself. The lawyer for the other party decided to make an offer to settle and after a bit of back and forth we settled.
Because of this settlement I decided to take my chances with the babysitter.
Without criminal charges it would be near impossible to bring any type of meaningful civil action against the babysitter.
And that’s how I ended up contacting the Edmonton Police Service on March 4th, 2011.
And as we all know, things didn’t work out as planned.
I did learn some interesting things though.
And learning things was better than not learning things.
I learnt for example that my father was right, that I wasn’t going to like the smell of the shit if I stuck my nose into the events of Canadian Forces Base Namao.
I learnt that no matter which base we were stationed at, civilian social services or medical staff were concerned about my father.
I learnt that my mother didn’t abandon the family, but that my father used the Defence Establishment Trespass Regulations to have my mother booted out of the PMQ after she threatened to take my brother and I away due to his out of control drinking and physical violence.
I learnt that the child sexual abuse scandal on Canadian Forces Base Namao was far larger than what I could ever have imagined.
I learnt that the Canadian Armed Forces considered a 52 year old military chaplain with the rank of captain having sexual relations with children as young as four years of age after imbibing them with alcohol in the rectory of the base chapel was nothing more than “acts of homosexuality” thus implying that the victims of McRae were just as guilty as McRae was.
I learnt that Terry, my much reviled “shrink” in the days after the sex abuse scandal on CFB Namao, was actually a social worker in the Canadian Armed Forces with the rank of captain.
I learnt that Canadian Forces Administrative Order CFAO 19-20 explained why Terry had such a massive concern about my perceived willing participation in the “homosexual” abuse on CFB Namao and that if I didn’t get my “homosexual” urges under control that I would be going to the Alberta Hospital for psychiatric treatments.
I learnt that due to the military’s official policies against homosexuality which viewed homosexuality as a mental illness, a deviancy, and a character flaw, most parents did not want it known that their children had been involved with “acts of homosexuality” and kept their children out of the investigation.
I learnt that my family’s infamous move from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, AB, to Canadian Forces Base Downsview, ON, in April of 1983 was not to avoid my social workers “giving me drugs to keep me from being attracted to other boys” like my father had said at the time, but was instead to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services due to their concern for my safety in the home.
I learnt that a flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 gave commanding officers within the Canadian Forces prosecutorial discretion over criminal code offences committed by their subordinates.
I learnt that another flaw contained within the National Defence Act prior to 1998 placed a 3-year-time-bar on all criminal code offences, including criminal code offences that do not have a statute of limitations.
I learnt that my father was described by social services as “often telling conflicting stories” from one meeting to the next, and “telling people he perceived to be in positions of authority what he thought they wanted to hear”. In other words, my father was a habitual liar and a sycophant.
I learnt from paperwork that I obtained from various agencies across Canada that everything that my father said during my childhood was basically a lie.
I learnt that the military justice system was defective, but that the CAF, the DND, and their various predecessors had always fought with parliament against reforming the military justice system.
I learnt that the CAF and the DND can use the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act as cudgels to gag anyone who was ever subjected to the Code of Service Discipline to silence.
I learnt that the Canadian Forces Military Police and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service are soldiers first and police officers second and that nothing in the National Defence Act places members outside of the Chain of Command and as such member of the base military police and the CFNIS must obey the lawful command of anyone with a rank superior to theirs.
I learnt that the Vice Chief of Defence Staff which is not a member of law enforcement has the right under the National Defence Act to direct any CFNIS investigation as they see fit.
I also learnt that the Supreme Court of Canada frowns upon the structure of the Canadian Forces Military Police Group as due to the hierarchy of the Canadian Forces the Minister of National Defence functions as the “chief of police” and has ultimate control over the military police even though it would be the Minister’s office that would be subjected to possible civil actions resulting from the outcomes of military police or CFNIS investigations. This is why civilian police always bring in police from other jurisdictions to investigate matters which may place the city of the first police agency at risk of civil actions.
I’ve also learnt that when people die, it doesn’t really matter for more than a few days, or maybe weeks, before everything goes on like nothing ever mattered.
I would really love to answer this one honestly, but I can’t.
It’s not that I don’t have answers.
I’ve learnt in life that some thoughts are best not released into the public realm.
But, if you know the life that I’ve endured you can pretty well imagine what actions I would have taken and when I would have taken them.
For better or worse I learnt in my youth when I was caught in the battle between captain Totzke and my civilian social workers to say what was expected, to say what was allowed, and to keep everything else in my mind.
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
I would never want to visit National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario.
NDHQ – where truth and integrity go to die.
Not that I would ever be invited.
But it is an organization of liars and deceivers.
The ultimate impenetrable boy club dedicated to buffing their own public imagine using the blood of its many victims.
It’s an organization that is more concerned about its own prestige and reputation than it is about justice and truth.
NDHQ in Ottawa is the seat of power and policy for the Canadian Armed Forces.
It is where the decisions are made.
Decisions like keeping the investigation of the death of a trans military dependent in the grasp of the dysfunctional CFNIS.
Decisions like willfully allowing the CFNIS to conduct dog ‘n’ pony show investigations while knowing full well that prosecutions for pre-1998 service offences are fully impossible.
Decisions like fighting a group of former army cadets since 1974 over compensation for an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces allowing a 14-year-old cadet to play with a live grenade citing that as these kids were cadets the military wasn’t legally responsible for them.
Decisions like refusing to acknowledge the fact that as children living in military housing on military bases we were often exposed to the same chemicals and hazardous materials that our serving parents were due to provincial safety regulations not being applicable on the bases across Canada.
It’s where political favours are called in, and where truth, decency, and honour go to be sacrificed on the altar of military pride and tradition.
National Defence Headquarters is not a place that I would ever go visit.
I truly and honestly cannot keep going on with this.
When Medical Assistance in Dying for mental health reasons becomes available on March 17th, 2027 I intend to be one of the first applicants.
Of course there’s still the chance that the disabled rights groups in this country will hijacked by the far right conservatives and manipulated to take to the streets in a thinly veiled astroturf campaign to stop the government from forcing the disabled to undergo M.A.i.D. in order to save costs.
The irony about the far right using the disabled is that the far right have never cared about this disabled, the marginalized, or the impoverished.
I’m tired.
Considering what I’ve gone through in this life, if I want to die in order to put an end to the daily misery and the overwhelming pointlessness, that should be a choice that I’m allowed to make.
And being as smart as I am is a double edged sword.
Sure, it’s kept me from a life of drugs on the street, but it’s also masked my suffering. People don’t see my daily suffering. They just see what I can do and they choose to ignore what I’ve gone through or what I am going through.
Justice?
“It was a different time back then”
“There were different mindsets”
“People’s attitudes were different”
Even in the modern day government entities such as the Department of Justice are trying to deal with me using the prevailing attitudes of the day from back then.
“The Canadian Forces are not responsible for the illegal activities of their service members”
“Military dependents such as spouses and children live in the military housing on military bases solely at their own risk”
From what I’ve seen of the Department of Justice both in my interactions with the DOJ in Federal Court in 2013 and my current day interactions with the DOJ, truth and justice are the least of their concerns. Their goal is to dodge and deflect and keep the government of Canada from owning up to the messes the National Defence Act created on military bases across Canada.
The DOJ knows from the records that I submitted in 2013 painted the 2011 CFNIS investigation into my complaints against the babysitter as a very flawed investigation, but the DOJ fought me tooth and nail.
Even after the Military Police Complaints Commission confirmed in 2019 that the CFNIS had in its possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 Courts Martial transcripts that confirmed that the military police, the CFSIU, Captain McRae commanding officer, and the Courts Martial panel all knew that it was the actions of the babysitter molesting younger children living on base that eventually brought Captain McRae to the attention of the CFSIU, the DOJ still wants to lean heavily upon the 2011 CFNIS investigation.
Am I going to stick it out with the DOJ until a settlement is reached?
I can’t see that happening.
Will a settlement bring closure?
Definitely not.
There is no dollar figure that will undo the suffering that I have endured over the last 45 years. The suffering has festered and metastasized. And you can sure as hell bet that as part of any settlement the DND and the DOJ will require very strict NDAs to be signed and the settlement, if reached, will portray the DND as having been very shocked and concerned about this one time anomaly in the military justice system.
And people want me to move on and just get over it?
Imagine being sexually abused so badly that within 2 years of the abuse ending you’re supposed to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital for emotionally disturbed children.
Imagine your father and your military social worker conspiring to move you from one jurisdiction in Canada to another jurisdiction in Canada to avoid your apprehension by social services. An apprehension that is being driven by the concerns of social services of your father’s anger issues and your safety within your father’s house.
Major Depression.
Severe Anxiety.
Haphephobia.
Sure, my father’s anger and my father’s temper and my father’s physical abuse helped me to learn how to mask this shit, but it’s alive and well.
Politicians?
Dr. Hedy Fry, the MP for Vancouver Centre absolutely refuses to become involved in my matter stating that “there are no military bases in the riding of Vancouver Centre”.
Avi Lewis, the candidate for the NDP in Vancouver Centre has no opinion on child sexual abuse in the Canadian Armed Forces or Medical Assistance in Dying. Or at least I don’t know if he does as I’ve never heard from him after filling out a memo form at his constituency office on Hornby St. near my dentist.
Health Care professionals
Even my current nurse practitioner is beginning to cause me to have some concern. When I first started seeing him around 2021 he assured me that he would be willing to help me apply for M.A.i.D. in 2023 and 2024.
In recent conversation though I feel that his questions seemed to be geared toward me having been “cured” with the escitalopram and the hormone therapy.
The escitalopram just takes the edge off the depression and the anxiety. I still wake up various times every night grinding my teeth. The depression is still there as I can sleep for days on end with absolutely no desire to get out of bed.
Hobbies?
Nothing appeals to me.
In 2015 I made contact with my babysitter <P.S.> and his father <J.S.>. It was actually <J.S.> that I spoke to first.
<J.S.> loved his son. <J.S.> needed his son.
The fact that <P.S.> sexually abused children on CFB Namao, CFB Petawawa, CFB Winnipeg, and CFB Namao again didn’t phase <J.S.> nor did the fact that <P.S.> continued to molest children well after the DND and the CAF kicked <P.S.> out of the military housing in 1985. None of this mattered to <J.S.>. He blamed the military for what had happened to his son. His son would have been fine if the military had looked after him.
My father? Yeah, Richard died in January of 2017 never acknowledging that he was wrong for having blamed me for “fucking with is military career”. Richard never apologized for having blamed me for “allowing the babysitter to molest Scott”. And Richard never did apologize for not protecting me from the desires of the Canadian Armed Forces and the malpractice of Captain Terry Totzke.
Media?
Except for a very few stories, no one gives a shit.
I had always thought that a story like mine, a story where I lay out how the documented flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act have such a horrific impact on modern day CFNIS investigations into past events on Canadian Forces Bases in Canada.
The media often ask “but Bobbie, if this was happening, where are all of the other victims? Surely you’re not the only one who got abused on the bases”. This is usually accompanied by massive eye rolling on the reporter’s behalf.
I myself would never have gone on a deep dive like I did except for when master corporal Christian Cyr opened his trap on May 3rd, 2011 and told me about Captain Father Angus McRae’s involvement in this matter.
I don’t know why Cyr did this. Master corporal Robert John Hancock was more discreet during our interview at VPD headquarters in March of 2011. He didn’t come out and blurt anything about McRae, he just kept asking over and over again “if there was anything else I wanted to talk about, anything the might be connected to this matter”.
I guess the problem with Cyr was that when he was handed the file he must have concluded that I was a money grubber just out to make a quick buck or two off the military so he decided that he wasn’t going to mince words and he was going to let me know point blank that he knew the truth about 1980 and that I was scamming the military.
What he probably didn’t anticipate is that due to the use of alcohol, I have no memories of what occurred at the base chapel after I was given the “sickly sweet grape juice”, and he probably didn’t anticipate the internet providing me with access to the lawsuit between my babysitter and the DOJ from back in 2001 when my former babysitter sued the Minister of National Defence for his abuse at the hands of Captain McRae.
If master corporal Christian Cyr had just kept his fucking mouth shut I never would have gone digging into the whole captain father Angus McRae matter on CFB Namao, which never would have led to me obtaining my social service records from across Canada, and so on.
If master corporal Christian Cyr had just kept his knowledge of CFSIU DS-120-10-80 and CM 62 to himself, then when the CFNIS told me in November of 2011 that “they just couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the babysitter was capable of what I accused him of”, I would have left if there.
And I think that in the majority of CFNIS investigation the investigators with the CFNIS are able to keep their cards close and to keep their poker faces on, unlike Cyr. So most victims of military child sexual abuse never get an inkling that the investigation into the complaints was nothing more than a “dog ‘n’ pony show”.
Has the media shown any concern at all that persons who were sexually abused on military bases prior to 1998 are unable to have charges laid against their abusers due to a statute of limitations in the pre-1998 National Defence Act that does not exist for persons who were sexually abused as children by members of the general public?
Nope.
The media couldn’t care less.
I’ve been trying to get the media interested in this story since 2012. 2021 was when I had enough of the facts together to present a story that should have started alarm bells ringing.
Nope.
Absolutely no interest.
Even in 2014, when Macleans was running their series of stories on sexual abuse in the military, not a single bit of interest. Actually, that’s not true, there was some interest, but that interest got dropped due to pressure from Macleans upper mgmt. I was supposed to stop in and have a meeting with Anne Marie Owens, but on the day of the meeting I showed up to Macleans and was told that she suddenly no longer worked at Macleans and that Macleans was now going in a completely different direction and that these stories were no longer an interest to Macleans.
And it’s not just Macleans, pretty well all of the media, including our so called “independent” media.
If you were to listen to the media in this country you’d swear that children never got sexually abused on base, that if they did, the military justice system would make everything right again.
Somehow the military justice system that couldn’t properly investigate rape against female service members was suddenly capable of investigating child sexual abuse?
Somehow the military justice system that failed miserably in Bosnia and Somalia due to chain of command interference was now somehow immune to chain of command influence when children were sexually abused on base?
The same military justice system that was under orders to ignore child sexual abuse committed by Afghan military forces in Afghanistan is suddenly free to investigate historical child sexual abuse on bases in Canada?
You would think that the media would show an interest.
nope.
nada.
zilch.
The usual excuses given by the media are some variation of “we’ve never heard of this before”, “where are all of the victims”, or ” the media spokesperson for DND and the CAF said that children were never sexually abused on base”.
But yeah, back to the original question posed by today’s prompt.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”
Dead for eight years and no longer bothered by this warped and twisted existence.
I dropped out of school at the start of grade 9. That’s junior high school. I never made it as far as high school.
Had to get out of the PMQ.
1987 was the start of the grade 9 school year for me.
September of 1987 was also two years removed from the summer of 1985.
The summer of 1985 was the last summer that my brother and I spent with our grandmother.
The summer of 1985 was also the summer that my father went on a rampage in the PMQ on CFB Downsview. He did some very significant damage to the PMQ. It took three military police officers to subdue him.
When my brother and I arrived back in Toronto from Edmonton my father was required to notify the base military police of our arrival so that they could come speak with us. When they did come to speak with us they told us that during their investigation they grew very concerned when they couldn’t find us so they started talking to the neighbours and that’s when they started hearing about Richard’s yelling and screaming and his physical abuse. The military police said that if my father ever lost his temper again that we were to flee the house before calling the base switchboard to ask for the military police.
In September of 1985, my father bought me a birthday cake. This blew my fucking socks off as he had never acknowledged a single birthday of mine since 1976, the year before my mother left. Even though he promised to never forget my birthday again, he never acknowledged my birthday again thereafter.
And his temper started to get out of control again by the spring of 1986. He just knew how to hide his outbursts better as he was under supervision of the military.
By the summer of 1987 my brother had graduated to credit card theft, B&Es, and car theft. He had also grown significantly larger than me and he was even physically larger than Richard. Richard could no longer control Scott. And Scott was now running with a group of thugs. Kids who had been in and out of the juvie system.
As Richard had given up on trying to control Scott, he instead turned to lashing out at me for allowing Scott t have been molested by the babysitter on CFB Namao and this is why Scott was acting as violent as he was.
So yeah, by the time September of 1987 rolled around, I had to get the fuck out of the house.
What would really piss me the fuck off is that in the summer of 2011, when I obtained my social service records from across Canada, I would learn that my family was actually under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto from the time we arrived in CFB Downsview in the spring of 1983.
This pissed me off because when I moved out I had to take my employment from part time to full time so that I could afford to rent a place to live.
Had I known about my family having been under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, I could have applied to CAST for emergency accommodation. I could have even arranged for the courts to make it mandatory for my father to pick up my bills until age 18. Either of these would have allowed me to finish off school while living in a safe environment.
I honestly can’t think of any family member having done anything positive for me.
And that’s not hyperbole.
My father was a piss tank alcoholic with anger issues.
My grandmother was just as much of a piss tank as my father was. And not only did she have a ton of anger issues, but she was also severely emotionally disturbed.
Can’t say much about my mother other than she didn’t really put up too much of a fight to save my brother and I from being raised by Richard and his alcoholic mother.
Sue? When she moved in with us she promised that she would get grandma to move out and that she would get my father to stop hitting us. Not sure if it was her, but grandma finally moved out in the spring of 1981 after having lived with us since 1977. She not only didn’t stop Richard from hitting my brother and I, but she started hitting us too. And when Richard would go away on training exercises, she’d get really mean.
Uncle Doug? He’s probably the only member of the Gill clan that did anything for my brother and I, but sadly he wasn’t around very often.
Beeshive 